For the first time since 2010, the Giants will have an Opening Day catcher not named Buster Posey. But the player who gets into the squat Thursday night won't be Posey's heir apparent, either.
The Giants chose Tyler Heineman and Rob Brantly as their catchers on the Opening Day roster. Bart, one of the organization's top two prospects, will begin the season at the alternate site in Sacramento with the other members of the player pool who did not make the initial roster.
Bart had a big spring and was the most impressive catcher in camp in recent simulated games, but the Giants went with the two players who were initially fighting to be Posey's backup this spring. Posey opted out of the season because his family is adopting twins who were born prematurely on the first day of camp.
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President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi explained to NBC Sports Bay Area over the weekend why Bart, who has just 79 at-bats above A-ball, may need more time to develop.
"As we've talked about a lot, particularly on the position player side from a development standpoint, upper-level reps are important," Zaidi said. "You go to the best players in baseball -- guys like Mike Trout and Mookie Betts had 500 at-bats in Double-A and Triple-A. Joey, unfortunately because of the injury last year, got a little held up, and as we've talked about he's got less than 100 plate appearances at the Double-A level.
"It's really two-fold. One is just getting him more competitive reps and we're planning to set up our Sacramento alternate site to be as competitive as possible and really expose him and the other position players we have to upper level pitching. The other thing that we want him to work on, which we haven't been able to so far, is getting some reps at first base. We want to maximize his opportunity and obviously we're going to have Buster (Posey) coming back in 2021. Positional versatility is important."
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Of course, there's another element to this decision. By holding Bart back, the Giants keep him from accruing service time on a prorated basis. Even keeping Bart with the other top prospects in Sacramento for a week could give the Giants an extra year of team control down the line, and teams have an extra reason to be worried about service time this season, as there's a chance baseball gets shut down at some point because of safety concerns.
It's likely that Bart is called up later in this 60-game season. The Giants saw over the last three weeks that he's just about ready for his first shot at big league pitching.
"He has been awesome over the last three weeks in camp and obviously he was really impressive in February and March also," Zaidi said. "As an organization we couldn't be higher on Joey. When I first came to the Giants in late 2018 I thought really highly of him and he has only improved that impression with what we've seen."